January 8 – Happy Birthday, Stephen Hawking

Stephen
Hawking is the most famous living physicist today. Actually, some
claim he is the most famous living scientist!

He
has a brilliant mind, and he has contributed to our understanding of
gravity, general relativity, black holes, and quantum mechanics.

He
has famously battled amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which has
gradually paralyzed his body and required the use of a wheelchair and
an electronic voice.

He
has appeared on Star Trek, The Big Bang Theory, and
Futurama, and he has granted
the use of his recognizable (and copyrighted!) synthesized voice for
a Pink Floyd song, an episode of The Simpsons,
and a major motion picture about Hawking's life!

(By the way,
Hawking's synthesized voice is American, despite the fact that
Hawking is British.)

Hawking was free of his wheelchair--and gravity!--briefly, on the "Vomit Comet."

Hawking
has won tons of honors from the scientific community but also from
such non-science sources as the British Royal Society of Arts, the
Presidential Medal of Freedom from the United States, and the Prince
of Asturias Award from Spain. His book A Brief History of
Time was on the best-seller list
for a record-breaking 237 weeks in Britain. (Compute that – it was
on the best-seller list for more than FOUR and a HALF YEARS!)

Hawking has been married twice and has had three kids, now grown.

To
celebrate Hawking's birthday (he was born on this date in 1942),
check out some of the great moments of what I like to call Stephen
Hawking TV:

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